Spiced with the reminiscences of some of the leading icons of that period, their fans and followers, and featuring a photographic gallery of well-known faces and far-out fashions...
The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London
Broadway
July 2003
368 pages ISBN: 0767905881 Trade Size (reprint) Add to Wish List
It’s the summer of 1966... The fundamental old ways:
chastity, rationality, harmony, sobriety, even democracy:
blasted to nothing or crumbling under siege. The city
glows. It echoes. It pulses. It bleeds pastel and fuzzy,
spicy, paisley and soft. This is how it's always going to
be: smashing clothes, brilliant music, easy sex, eternal
youth, the eyes of everybody, everyone's first thought, the
top of the world, right here, right now: Swinging London.
Shawn Levy has a genius for unearthing the secret history
of popular culture. The Los Angeles Times called King of
Comedy, his biography of Jerry Lewis, "a model of what a
celebrity bio ought to be--smart, knowing, insightful,
often funny, full of fascinating insiders' stories," and
the Boston Globe declared that Rat Pack
Confidential "evokes the time in question with the power of
a novel, as well as James Ellroy's American Tabloid and
better by far than Don DeLillo's Underworld."
In Ready, Steady, Go! Levy captures the spirit of the
sixties in all its exuberance. A portrait of London from
roughly 1961 to 1969, it chronicles the explosion of
creativity--in art, music and fashion--and the revolutions--
sexual, social and political--that reshaped the world. Levy
deftly blends the enthusiasm of a fan, the discerning eye
of a social critic and a historian's objectivity as he re-
creates the hectic pace and daring experimentation of the
times--from the utter transformation of rock 'n' roll by
the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to the new aesthetics
introduced by fashion designers like Mary Quant,
haircutters like Vidal Sassoon, photographers like David
Bailey, actors like Michael Caine and Terence Stamp and
filmmakers like Richard Lester and Nicolas Roeg to the wild
clothing shops and cutting-edge clubs that made Carnaby
Street and King's Road the hippest thoroughfares in the
world.
Spiced with the reminiscences of some of the leading icons
of that period, their fans and followers, and featuring a
photographic gallery of well-known faces and far-out
fashions, Ready, Steady, Go! is an irresistible re-creation
of a time and place that seemed almost impossibly fun.
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